Councillor Nurse Sonya Chandler on harm reduction: ‘make sure staff and Council are on the same page’

Victoria City Councillor Sonya Chandler is a nurse and mother, and frankly, like many of her left wing cohort on the Victoria City Council, a fanatic for harm reduction.

She wants a ‘special meeting’ to discuss the City of Victoria’s next steps in a harm-reduction strategy.

They all agreed to it without setting a date.

There is an awful lot of play-acting and posturing that goes on when it comes to so-called ‘harm reduction.’

The unsigned article in the monopoly daily today (see link below in Comments) puts it this way: ‘harm reduction traditionally involves distributing the likes of clean needles, crack-smoking paraphernalia such as pipes or pipe mouthpieces, condoms and literature in an attempt to lessen the spread of infectious diseases like AIDS and hepatitis.’

The Council should first of all take note of the fact that the Vancouver Island Health Authority (VIHA) is mandated to do this, not the City of Victoria.

It should further note that VIHA, despite its supposed best efforts, has failed to find a replacement facility for the one closed on Cormorant Street after years of disruption, in May 2008.

There is a reason that VIHA has had such difficulty finding a location for these activities and it is a simple one.

Landlords and landladies do not want to rent to agencies that aid or enable in any way anti-social, unsavoury, unhealthy and criminal behaviour such as public injections, fights, public sex acts and acts of indecency, defecation, urination, etc.

All this sort of related activity is usually attendant on the taxpayer subsidized provision of so-called ‘harm reduction’ services.

Polite Victorian bourgeois shopkeepers, commercial property owners and real estate agents will give de rigueur or pro forma lip service to support for ‘harm reduction’ to tv cameras and newspaper journalists, but in real fact, do not want the crime and headaches with blood, feces, urine, discarded needles and other associated paraphernalia, including litter and wrappings, police visits, sirens, screaming, lost business, graffitti, etc…

People say they support it, but not in their neighbourhood, in other words.